According to the “2023 Global Payments Report” by global financial technology pioneer FIS, India’s e-commerce (e-com) sector is projected to grow from USD 83 billion in 2022 to USD 150 billion in 2026, as cash transactions continue to drop and Unified Payments Interface (UPI)-based transactions continue to set all-time highs.
- As of January 2023, UPI had the biggest year-on-year (Y-o-Y) growth rate of 74.1% in transaction volume.
FIS, based in Florida, United States (US), is a global provider of technology solutions for merchants, banks, and capital markets organizations.
Significance
i.Cash usage decreased from 71% of POS transaction value in 2019 to just 27% in 2022, causing India to become a global leader in payments, with the development of its next-generation real-time payment (RTP) infrastructure.
ii.UPI has aided the growth of e-commerce account-to-account (A2A) payments to USD 12 billion, a 53% increase between 2021 and 2022.
- By 2026, the value of A2A transactions is anticipated to grow by 195% to USD 36 billion.
iii.A2A payments are expected to grow from 15% in 2022 to 24% in 2026 in terms of their share in e-commerce payment methods.
UPI – An Almost Default Payment Option in India
i.While cash is still used, UPI is increasingly being used for peer-to-peer transactions, implying that UPI has practically become India’s default payment mechanism.
ii.Data from FIS indicates that by 2026, the value of transactions involving cash is projected to decrease by 34% whereas those using digital wallets are projected to increase by 88%.
iii.The online e-commerce market is expected to rise by 82% by 2026, providing a further impetus to digital payments.
iv.UPI has emerged as India’s leading digital payment platform, with a massive 427% increase in transaction volume between March 2020 and August 2022.
v.Digital wallets have grown from a 5% point-of-sale (POS) market share in 2019 to 35% in 2022, backed by UPI, primarily due to its easy interoperability with commercial wallets like Google Pay, Paytm, and PhonePe.
- Digital wallets accounted for 35% of POS transaction value and 50% of e-commerce transaction value in India in 2022.
vi.The volume of UPI transactions continues to rise rapidly, rising from 2.2 billion in December 2020 to 4.5 billion in December 2021 and 7.8 billion in December 2022.
vii.The number of banks that accept UPI has climbed to 385 as of January 2023, and this figure is likely to grow in the upcoming years.
viii.According to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor Shaktikanta Das, daily transactions through UPI has crossed 36 crore from 24 crore in February 2022, an exponential increase over the previous 12 months.
- These transactions amounted to Rs 6.27 lakh crore in value terms.
FIS Global Payments Report 2023
i.The FIS Global Payments Report 2023 evaluates how consumers pay in 40 global markets, both in-store and online.
ii.According to estimates from the 2023 report, there were around 70 real-time payment (RTP) schemes offering high – speed payment platforms in 2022.
- Because of these high – speed payment platforms, A2A payments accounted for USD 525 billion in global e-commerce transaction value in 2022, up 13% from USD 463 billion in 2021.
Recent Related News:
i.In February 2023, PhonePe launched support for “UPI international” payments, making it India’s first fintech platform to enable cross-border Unified Payments Interface (UPI) payments. Indian users of PhonePe can utilize this feature to instantly pay foreign merchants using UPI when they are travelling abroad.
ii.UPI International is intended to make transactions safe and simple for millions of Indians travelling abroad. It supports all international merchant outlets with a local QR (quick response) code in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Singapore, Mauritius, Nepal, and Bhutan.
About Unified Payments Interface (UPI)
i.UPI is an instant payment system developed by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), an entity regulated by the RBI.
- UPI is built on the Immediate Payment Service (IMPS) infrastructure and allows customers to transfer money between any two bank accounts instantly.
- IMPS is an instant interbank electronic fund transfer service by mobile phone that is also available through other channels such as ATMs, Internet Banking, and so on.
ii.Dr. Raghuram G. Rajan, the then-Governor of RBI, launched UPI as a pilot programme on April 11, 2016, in Mumbai, Maharashtra.
- NPCI performed the pilot launch with 21 member banks.
- On August 25, 2016, banks began uploading UPI-enabled apps to the Google Play store.
